Rian Johnson Reveals Why Luke Uses Blue Lightsaber In The Last Jedi

Out of all of the Star Wars films so far, none has sparked as much hate and debate than The Last Jedi.

There are plenty of things that I can pick at and there are plenty of scenes that sparked fan backlash, one, in particular, was how Luke Skywalker was used by Rian Johnson.

SPOILERS!

In that EPIC Last Jediconfrontation on Crait, in which Luke challenges Kylo to battle — mentor vs. mentee — allowing for General Leia Organa and the rest of the Resistance fighters to flee the surrounded outpost, true Star Wars fans probably noticed something about that lightsaber fight.

While Kylo is carrying his red dual head lightsaber, Luke, on the other hand, is holding his blue lightsaber, which is the amazing Kylo and Rey fight scene before was broken in half. Why wasn’t Luke carrying his Green lightsaber? The one he had on the Jedi temple, the one he was about to strike down Ben Solo with?

Instead Luke — rather, the Force projection on Crait, since the real Luke was sitting atop a rock on Ahch-To the whole time — battled Kylo wielding Anakin Skywalker’s blue lightsaber. According to writer-director Rian Johnson, per IGN, that subtle detail is actually a pretty big deal as Luke’s whole game plan going into his final confrontation with Kylo was to severely rattle the young, Emo Supreme Leader.

“[Luke] is basically tailoring this projection to have maximum effect on Kylo,” Johnson revealed. “He knows that Kylo’s Achilles’ heel is his rage, and so that’s why he kind of makes himself look younger, the way Kylo would’ve last seen him in their confrontation at the temple, and that’s why he decided to bring Kylo’s grandfather’s lightsaber down there — the lightsaber that Kylo screamed at Rey, ‘That’s mine, that belongs to me.'”

He went on to add:

We as an audience saw that… The truth is, we see the lightsaber split in half — Kylo sees a blinding flash of light and is knocked unconscious, and then Rey takes the lightsaber away before he wakes up. So if you really want to dig into it and get an explanation, you can say that he doesn’t 100 percent know what happened to the lightsaber.

The blue lightsaber was one of my biggest gripes so I’m glad that Rian explained it finally. It actually makes sense.